#3 - During 1991 the number of people in the town of Bayburg

[ellenb]

Dear Powerscore,

For this question I know that the correct answer is E, however, I picked C. I just want to know why C is wrong and why E is right.

Maybe one of the reasons that C is wrong because the people that moved from the other city do not recieve food assistance unlike the residents that already do which is describe in the stimulus.

And in the answer choice E there were ppl that would qualify they were not informed sort of like an example of a stimulus that I have read before, the crimes did not just jump in a city, it is that the system of notifying about crimes got better in the city.

Thanks in advance

Ellen

[Jason Schultz]

Hi ellenb,

Question 3 is a classic Resolve the Paradox question. Remember, in a resolve the paradox question, your role is to find some additional fact that explains how both of the apparently paradoxical facts in the stimulus can happen simultaneously. The difficulty in prephrasing paradox questions is that there could be any number of answers which do this. So, in my view, the best way to attack these types of problems is to ask yourself "Why is this a paradox in the first place?"

In #3, it's a paradox because if the number of poor people in Bayburg remained the same, why are so many more of them seeking government assistance? Answer choice C doesn't explain the paradox, because you are explicitly told that the number of people in Bayburg who were eligible remained the same.

Answer choice E, however, does resolve it. The government was actively promoting its own assistance programs, so that even though the number of needy remained the same, more of them took advantage of the offered programs.

[simonsap]

Answer choice C says that many lost their jobs and moved to Bayburg. It did not say that they had low incomes. For all we know, they could have found high-paying jobs in Bayburg.

E suggests that the low-income food assistance program was more readily promoted via other complementary/parallel low-income programs, increasing exposure and awareness to its availability, and thus more people taking advantage of it.